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Will malaria parasites defy elimination?

Three new articles in Malaria Journal plus a news release from the Commonwealth Games in India remind us that like any other organism, the malaria parasite will fight for survival.

Yvonne Lim and colleagues document a rare case of P. ovale imported into Malaysia. They note that local vectors are capable of transmitting this parasite as well as an “exponential increase in the number of visitors from P. ovale endemic regions.”

A Nigerian table tennis player at the Commonwealth Games in India withdrew after coming down with malaria. The Times of India implies that the illness may be a result of “The Capital’s dreaded mosquitoes.” Depending on when he arrived in India, Ekundayo Nasiru could have brought the disease with him. In either case the potential for importing and exporting malaria exists.

Now under way in several pilot countries, “The Affordable Medicines Facility-Malaria (AMFm) is a mechanism to increase access to quality assured ACT.” AMFm hopes that with approved and cheaper artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) drugs monotherapies will be driven from the market and the lifespan of ACTs will be prolonged, thus “reducing the likelihood of resistance to artemisinin.”

Although pharmacokinetic (ethnic-related) factors including resistance of P. falciparum to mefloquine contribute to some treatment failure following treatment with a three-day combination regimen of artesunate-mefloquine, results suggest that artesunate resistance may be emerging at the Thai-Myanmar border.

These experiences show how important it is not only to document drug resistance and imported cases but also to help countries plan “Robust Malaria surveillance systems towards malaria pre-elimination and assessing Roadmaps achievements,” which is the theme of a meeting of the East Africa Regional Network (RBM) underway in Kigali. More technical assistance is needed in “strengthening Malaria surveillance in high and low burden countries,” if elimination goals are ever to be achieved.